


Choosing My Confessions

by woodworms_before_breakfast



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, POV Will, see idk anything about spies and agents so i did my best, tw: guns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:07:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29517159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodworms_before_breakfast/pseuds/woodworms_before_breakfast
Summary: Will bites back a sob and chances a glance at his best friend. Destiny is some cruel kind of mother, a coward who won’t take lives but ruins them instead.
Relationships: Merlin & Will (Merlin), Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28
Collections: The Melee Challenge





	Choosing My Confessions

**Author's Note:**

> Melee Challenge: February 13 - February 20, 2021  
> Prompt #2 (Engage)

_Breathe._

_Engage._

_F-_

“Hope you haven’t been waiting long!”

Will inhales sharply, blinks and forces himself to look up. He meets Merlin’s cheery grin with a half-hearted smile of his own and waits for his best friend to slide into the booth.

“I’d say half an hour’s pretty long, yes,” he retorts, earning him a scoff.

“Arthur kept me extra long this morning,” Merlin says, pouring coffee from Will’s mug into his own. “He has to go somewhere this afternoon, so we won’t be seeing each other until tonight. He’s really clingy once you get to know him, actually…”

As Merlin rambles on, his voice in that pitch of pure happiness reserved for his boyfriend, Will feels the world fade around the booth. The diner is an abstract painting of fluorescent lights and greasy walls as it is, the silvery-blue colors reminiscent of a public toilet. Alternative rock streams timidly from the speakers, as though ashamed to play R.E.M. on repeat.

Everything is dull and lifeless. Will doesn’t know what ever made him and Merlin choose the Rising Sun as a watering hole. It can’t have been the food, he thinks, staring at the neon-orange slop on his plate. _Corned beef hash, my ass._ Merlin insists it’s the music, the atmosphere. Unless this orchestra nerd has somehow developed an affinity for Green Day, Will doubts that, too.

No, the answer is simple. The Rising Sun is an abandoned thing of the past, and Will and Merlin are holding onto it because that’s what they do. They sway on the dance floor as everyone else files out of the party.

Will bites back a sob and chances a glance at his best friend. _Just the two of us._ Destiny is some cruel kind of mother, a coward who won’t take lives but ruins them instead.

He thinks of that morning, when his life was easier, so complicated but in such a familiar way. Another day of lies and deception that no longer left an aching guilt in him, a habit of which years and necessity had erased any doubts.

He’d hopped in a cab as Merlin saw him off, turned right at Sceaft Street and torn off his Wendy’s uniform. The cab driver had parked by the usual fire hydrant, turned around and peeled off his mustache and sunglasses to unveil Gwaine’s grinning face. They had both silently slipped into gear and prepared for another day on the field.

Except today isn’t another day on the field, Will reminds himself with a sinking in his stomach. Today is the day he got a mission that toppled the neat stack of books he arranged on his desk, the papers that planned every year for the rest of his perfect life.

 _The life of a field agent_ , he thinks morosely. Then, with a derisive chuckle: _call yourself what you are, coward. The life of an assassin_.

It’s the truth, really. He was born with fingers shaped to wrap around a trigger. Director Kilgharrah placed a gun between them and told him where to point. Damn those archery lessons, and Mr. Leon from summer camp telling him his aim was incredible. Damn all the different coaches saying he was made for playing on a field, for leading a team, for running or jumping or tackling. They were all floodlights then, shadows now, ghosts laughing at him for driving himself off a cliff.

Gwaine heard the news before Will, which shouldn’t have surprised him as much as it did. They had shouldered by each other as Will trudged his way to the Director’s bureau, and Gwaine had shot him a solemn thumbs down.

“It’s someone close to you,” Kilgharrah had said, almost as soon as Will closed the door. “I’m sorry. Under normal circumstances, we’d have it transferred, find a different target for you. But they’re asking for immediate action, and you said before you didn’t mind.”

Will held a manila folder in his palms. It was shaking and blurring at the borders. He opened it to check the target, and breathed a sigh of relief.

He had been so certain. Merlin was his only real friend — everyone else could go piss themselves, even if they did go for drinks together once in a blue moon. _Someone close to you_ , Kilgharrah had said. He’d been so afraid that he would open the folder and see shining, half-moon eyes smiling back at him.

It wasn’t Merlin. It was Arthur.

Some part of him knew it was wrong to be relieved. Not just wrong, but foolish. The sweet mercy, that it was not Merlin, would dissolve soon and leave only Arthur’s stern face staring grimly up at him from the paper.

“No, Will,” Kilgharrah said. He was frowning, with a wrinkled blend of pity and disappointment, as he studied the relieved half-smile on Will’s face. “No witnesses.”

Will clutched his chest, feeling the emptiness where his heart had been rejoicing only a second ago. Years of training were all that kept his fist from flying at that moment — whether into the wall or into Director Kilgharrah’s face, he would never know.

“Will?”

Merlin has leaned over the table to clutch his arm, his face pale and frightened. This is not the face of a wanted man, and Will should never have doubted it. He wants to grab Merlin by the shoulders and scream at him for falling in love with the one man in the city who is more dangerous than Will.

But it’s over. Will reaches behind his ear to turn on the bug, hidden below his messy dirt-brown hair. Merlin keeps smiling. Will scratches his ear all the time, nothing new.

“So where are you two meeting today?” he asks thickly, croaking through the bile in his throat.

“His place,” Merlin says happily. “Dinnertime, I think. So you won’t be seeing me after five.”

Kilgharrah’s click sounds in his ear. They’ve heard, and they will expect him to be on the rooftop across the way at five o’clock, ready to help them blow his own world apart.

It’s freezing on the rooftop. He’s playing an R.E.M. song in his headphones, the same one that was enveloping the Rising Sun as he had breakfast with Merlin for the last time. The wind is relentless, cold as ice against his cheeks, and he almost wishes it would slap him awake. If only this were a dream. But the sounds of traffic below leak into his ears, and the last rays of sun stab at his eyes until he focuses on the window across the street.

Gold and silver light pours through the small square where Merlin is shuffling in and out of sight, facing away from the glass as he gestures at Arthur, who watches him with a lovesick smirk etched into his face. _Gold and silver._ Will and Merlin, and now Arthur, mining away with his pickaxe and destroying a lifetime of trust.

Will berates himself. There was never any trust, and he has only himself to blame. Maybe it’s easier this way: no trust means no friendship, and that means he has nothing to lose.

 _No witnesses_ , Kilgharrah barks.

He checks his watch. Quarter past five. He has another fifteen minutes before Kilgharrah realizes how difficult this choice is and sends stronger, harder men to finish the job.

Will brings out his rifle and adjusts his position to find the right angle. Arthur is grasping Merlin’s arms, and something is wrong, because he’s sinking to his knees and Will hasn’t fired yet. But no- it’s just one knee, and he’s holding out a ring between his fingers, and Merlin’s laughing and Arthur’s smiling and-

 _He has to go somewhere this afternoon_ , Merlin had said.

Maybe it’s a mercy to end this before it turns into anything more, Will thinks. Before Merlin has a chance to say yes. He listens to the wind, to the rock music in his ears, to the echoes of Merlin’s laughter that come from the Rising Sun rather than the window across the way.

His fingers tremble as they settle in that familiar grip and flicks the safety.

_Breathe._

_Engage_.

_Fire._

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Losing My Religion" by R.E.M.


End file.
